


New Face of Failure

by Khashana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Anxiety, Closeted Trans Character, Dysfunctional Relationships, Falling In Love, Fighting, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Olympics AU, Podfic, Podfic Length: 1.5-2 Hours, Podfic and fic together, Trans Male Character, discussion of Jack Zimmermann’s overdose, helicopter parent, just sideways of women’s figure skating RPF, the olympics, this is a story about allosexuals Will, toxic parenting, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-07 14:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: Fresh out of rehab, an angry, jaded Jack is dragged unwillingly to the Olympics, where he begins a passionate love affair with a figure skater who understands him more than he thought possible.





	1. Olympic Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to KoreChthonia for Olympics/Vancouver subject matter expertise, maramcgregor for figure skating subject matter expertise, and halfdesertedstreets for sensitivity read, you made this story so much better <3
> 
> Created for the omgcp reverse bang 2019 with art by [palateens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palateens/pseuds/palateens)

[Podfic here](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/new-face-of-failure/)

  
  


_So he said, "Would it be all right_  
_If we just sat and talked for a little while_  
_If in exchange for your time_  
_I give you this smile?"_  
_So she said, "That's OK_  
_As long as you can make a promise_  
_Not to break my little heart_  
_Or leave me all alone in the summer."_  
_Well he was just hanging around_  
_Then he fell in love_  
_And he didn't know how_  
_But he couldn't get out_  
_Just hanging around_  
_Then he fell in love_  
_In the middle of summer_  
_All was golden in the sky_  
_All was golden when the day met the night_  
~When the Day Met the Night, Panic! At the Disco

  


There isn’t much Jack wants to do less than watch NHL players who all know his dad’s name and probably know his at the top of their game in the career he torpedoed for himself.

“Well, too bad,” says Maman matter-of-factly. “We’ve been looking forward to this for months, Dr. Eidelberg says we have to stop treating you like you’re going to break, and you need to get out of the house. So we’re going. All of us.”

  


It’s both not as bad and worse than he expected. His dad wants to talk to all the NHL players—or rather they all want to talk to him, and Papa likes _people_ too much to turn away fans, particularly ones who are actual players. So they move at a snail’s pace through any room with hockey players in it, and Jack tries to hide behind Maman because every single one of them looks at him with curiosity or pity or derision.

(Jack might be imagining that last part. He’s not sure.)

The first few games are bittersweet, knowing that he could have been in this game, had he not fucked everything up, and he goes back to the room after the game against Norway to sulk, but the Switzerland game goes to OT, and then a shootout, and Jack’s on the edge of his seat with everybody else when Crosby wins it for Canada.

He does still love watching hockey, it turns out. It’s good to know.

His mom wears a shirt with the American flag to the US game, and they lose. Jack has to walk away to keep from snapping at her, even though he knows it isn’t her fault, and that she was mostly wearing the shirt to chirp his dad. It might be for the better that one of the women’s figure skating events is on at the same time as the qualification playoff game, and Maman goes to watch that instead.

They beat Germany, and Jack’s feeling more charitable when Maman comes back raving about the skaters.

“Gina Jackson’s daughter is _every bit_ as good as she was,” she tells him, gesturing as she talks. “Her short program was amazing.”

Jack doesn’t actually care, so he would have left it, but Papa asks, “Who’s Gina Jackson?”

“She was an excellent skater, oh, twenty-five years ago? First American woman to do a triple axel in competition. U.S. Champion twice. Huge name in the competitive circuit. She never medaled in the Olympics, somehow. But I really think we have a shot this year with McKenzie.”

It sinks in that his mother is talking about a girl who’s trying to succeed in the same sport as her high-profile mother, and that…

Jack can empathize with that.

They eat out that night at a restaurant made of glass and located conveniently right downtown, and as they’re leaving their table, Maman says, “Oh!” and weaves through the crowd to another table, where a blonde, athletic girl in a tracksuit and a stiff, brunette woman in a suit, possibly her mother, are sitting.

“I just loved your performance today,” his mother is gushing by the time Jack and Papa make it over. “Absolutely stunning.”

“Thank you,” says the girl politely. She has a bun in her hair, a pointed chin, and just a scattering of freckles across her nose.

“And Gina, may I call you Gina? I was such a fan in your heyday!”

“It’s always lovely to meet fans,” says the woman, shaking Maman’s hand. She’s also wearing her hair in a bun, making them match weirdly, but her hair is brown and her face is heart-shaped.

“I’ve been telling my family all about you. Bob, Jack, this is Gina Jackson and McKenzie Parson.”

“Pleasure,” says Papa, and shakes both their hands. Which means Jack has to, of course.

“Bob Zimmermann?” says Gina, peering at Papa. “I thought you looked familiar. My first husband was a hockey fan.”

Papa grins. Jack can’t imagine using the past tense for being a hockey fan. Did people grow out of it or something?

“That makes you…” says Gina, looking at Jack, who sighs.

“Jack Zimmermann,” he fills in dully in an attempt to head off _his junkie blowout kid_ , hoping he communicates _leave me the fuck alone_. Gina, thankfully, doesn’t press, and they make their excuses.

  


They barely get across the street before yet another hockey player accosts Papa, and thankfully it’s dark enough by now that Jack just hangs back when he recognizes the guy and manages to slip past notice.

Until someone says, “Hey, Jack,” behind him, and he turns around to find McKenzie Parson.

“Wanna go walk the Seawall? There’s a park near here.”

“Go on, dear,” says Maman before Jack can say anything. “Just text us if you’re staying out late.”

He can tell by her smile that she thinks McKenzie’s hitting on him, and he doesn’t really know what to do with that. McKenzie’s pretty, for sure, but really, why would she have ditched her mom to come running after _him_? Why wouldn’t she just have said something at the restaurant? Jack knows intellectually that he’s attractive, now, which is still something of a mind-boggling revelation after his childhood, but he wasn’t exactly laying on the charm. And there’s nothing about McKenzie, standing there with a quirk to her lips and a slightly raised eyebrow, that says…well, _puck bunny._

He follows her.

The Seawall, it turns out, is a bike/walking path, that after a few minutes winds to a view of the water, framed by trees, which Jack suspects is picturesque in the daylight and now feels like the only place there is, a place containing nobody but the two of them.

“Mom told me who you are,” says McKenzie eventually. Jack holds back a wince. “And, I don’t wanna say I get it, man, because, like, I never ended up in the hospital, but…”

Jack exhales in a rush of relief. “No, I know what you mean. The famous parent thing. I thought of that too when my mother told me about you.”

“You knew who I was?” She looks at him warily. Jack shakes his head.

“Only since today. Maman came home gushing about your, euh…”

“Short program?” she fills in. “I like your mom. I always like the fans who don’t immediately compare me to my mother to my face.”

“Really?” says Jack. Without agreeing on anything, they come to a stop by a bench. “Even if someone doesn’t say anything, I always know that’s what they’re thinking.”

“You can’t _know,_ dude. Unless you’re a mind reader.”

Jack knows he can’t actually be certain everyone’s comparing him to his father, but he remains unconvinced. She smirks at him again, but somehow Jack thinks that’s just her actual smile. Something about the eyes.

“I know what you mean, though,” she says when he doesn’t respond, breaking eye contact to stare off into the distance. Jack follows her gaze. There’s nothing there. “It’s always fucking _there,_ isn’t it?”

_”Yes.”_

“That’s all you ever hear from announcers, is will you be as good, like you’re never _you,_ you’re just _Gina Jackson’s daughter,_ it’s like, fuck off and…” She trails off, waving a hand through the air, and Jack wants to take it.

“And let me be good at this for myself,” he finishes for her. “Exactly. And it’s _always_ gonna be like that. Even if I never go back to hockey.”

“Are you?” She looks at him again, eyes big and sharp and some undefinable color in the low light of the nearby streetlamp.

“I don’t know,” Jack rasps.

“I’m not,” McKenzie whispers, like if anyone hears her something will break. “In two days I’m gonna break her record, and then I’m fucking done.” Jack can’t look away. He might drown in those eyes.

“Won’t you miss it?”

Because that’s what keeps him from throwing it all in the garbage, from walking away from the spotlight and becoming Bad Bob’s son who used to play hockey and now does pottery or some fucking thing for a living. He’s always loved hockey.

It just hasn’t always loved him back.

“I’m not giving up _skating,_ ” she says, still in a whisper. “But I’m gonna skate for _me_ now.”

It’s the most beautiful thing Jack has ever heard.

He kisses her.

Or maybe she kisses him, or they meet in the middle, it’s hard to tell, but her hands come up to frame his face, and his arms come up to pull her slight frame into his, and the kiss is like finding a home somewhere he’s never been.

“Do you wanna come back to my room?” she whispers between his lips.

“Yes,” Jack whispers back.

  


She takes him back to her room, and he debates whether it’s late enough that he should text Maman, and eventually errs on the side of caution and tells her they might be out for a while.

She texts back a reminder to use a condom.

Honestly, sometimes Jack doesn’t know whether to feel grateful or exasperated that he has Maman for a mother.

Condoms aren’t going to a problem, he realizes when he sees the bowl of condoms by the bed. At first he thinks she came extremely prepared for this, but then he realizes the bowl is part of the hotel décor.

“Do these rooms just come with…those?” he asks, waving at it.

McKenzie shrugs, unpinning her hair, and backs him onto the bed to climb into his lap and stick her tongue down his throat.

Jack kisses her back enthusiastically and runs his hands up the back of her shirt. “You’re so pretty,” he murmurs between her lips, which feels like a dumb thing to say but also girls like compliments, right?

He brings his hands around to cup her breasts and squeeze gently, and very slowly, he realizes that she’s shaking.

Jack’s an asshole, he’ll freely admit that, but he’s not that much of an asshole. He pulls his hands back completely and says, “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” McKenzie tries to say, but her voice catches, and Jack isn’t sure whether he should hold her or not touch her at all.

He goes for not touching her at all, which is probably the right decision because she climbs off his lap a second later and turns away, one hand pressed to her face.

“Are you okay?” Jack says again, which is a dumb question because he already knows the answer. “Do you want me to leave?”

She nods, then says, “No,” but her voice is still warbling all over the place and Jack thinks maybe he should go with the first answer, and then he thinks maybe she needs him to stay but not have sex with her, and Jack is like the least qualified to be emotional support but he really likes her and he wants to try.

“I want to,” says McKenzie. “I really want to, but I can’t, not like that, and you need to leave, you need to get out of my room—” Jack gets up and makes his way to the door, but she’s still talking. “—because I’m going to tell you why, I know I am, it’s going to happen, and I need you not in my room in case you turn out to be like, an asshole.”

Jack doesn’t understand, but he gets enough to remove himself to the hall. McKenzie scrubs at her face and follows to the doorway, one hand on the jamb, one on the doorknob, like she needs to be able to slam it shut, but she doesn’t look at him, she stares off at a point somewhere to the right of his knees and trembles so hard he can see it.

“I really, really want to, but I can’t because I know you’re thinking of me as a girl and I’m not a fucking girl, and you probably don’t want to sleep with me now but I can’t handle it, okay, calling me pretty and touching my breasts and it’s like we were saying, about how you can’t know what people are thinking, but you still do?”

“Okay,” says Jack when she has to breathe. She stops dead and stares at him. Her eyes are wide and shiny and grey. Her hair is falling in messy strands around her face.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” repeats Jack. “So you’re, euh, transgender? A guy?”

“Yeah,” says McKenzie quietly, still staring. Jack’s heart hurts for her. Wait, no. For him.

“Can I give you a hug?” he says. McKenzie nods, small and still freaked out, gaze dropping back to the floor, and Jack steps forward and hugs him.

They stand there silently for a long minute, McKenzie curled into Jack’s chest. He rocks them slightly, the way his mother used to do for him, before he grew taller than her.

“Do you have a different name?” he asks eventually. McKenzie shakes his head. Jack thinks for a moment. “Can I call you Kenny?” he decides, and gets a shaky laugh in return.

“My mom calls me that sometimes.”

“Oh, okay.”

“No, I like it. Like, reclaiming it from her, I guess? And I like that you could call me that in front of her and be like, reaffirming my identity or whatever and she would never guess.”

“Cool.” Jack squeezes him gently. “You wanna go back inside?”

“Yeah, okay.”

They separate long enough to re-enter the room. Jack shuts the door behind himself, and sits back down on the bed and opens his arms. Kenny comes willingly back.

“Don’t feel obligated to stay or whatever,” he mutters into Jack’s shoulder. “I know I ruined the mood.”

“I mean, kind of,” says Jack. “But it’s okay, really. I don’t mind.”

“Bros don’t sit around and cuddle bros,” says Kenny, pulling away again. “If you’re just gonna pay lip service but still treat me like a girl…”

Jack sighs heavily and takes a moment to gather his thoughts.

“One, I am, or I was, a hockey player, and I can tell you _beyond a doubt_ that bros cuddle bros.” _Not like that,_ a voice says in his head, _like you’d ever snuggle up to Bergey like that,_ but he ignores it. “Two, I gave you a hug because _you’re upset._ ”

“So you’re waiting for me to calm down so you can still get some?” challenges Kenny, eyes flashing. Jack closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face.

“Three, no, my maman would disown me if I slept with you when you’re this vulnerable. Four,” he raises his voice before Kenny can interrupt, “Guys are allowed to be upset and vulnerable and need help, you sort of get that drilled into you when you _overdose_ because you didn’t feel like you could reach out to anyone. Five, even if I do sleep with you later, it’ll be because I _like guys, too._ ”

Kenny stares at him, mouth slightly open, apparently out of steam. He appears to deflate, all the fight draining out of him.

“Okay. Snuggle me, then, Jack Zimmermann.”

He does.

  


Jack ends up going back to his hotel room for the night, dodging his parents’ knowing looks, but he and Kenny exchanged numbers before they parted, and Kenny texts him the next day to ask if he wants to hang out.

_The Russia game’s on at 16h30, but I can do before that or after the game_

Kenny sends back _what time is that in American._

Jack rolls his eyes. _4:30_

_ok what times it end_

_about 19h30 if it ends in regulation._ And then, _7:30 for you._

_lets do before the game,_ sends Kenny. _meet me by the seawall same place as we kissed yesterday_

  


When he gets to the Seawall, Kenny’s standing there leaning against a tree, looking just as gorgeous as before. His hair is down today. Jack comes to a stop in front of him, and they stare at each other for a moment.

“Tell me about the record you’re going to break,” Jack says finally to break the silence, and Kenny lights up. They start walking as Kenny talks, gesturing widely.

“So Mom’s the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition, right? But she never did it at the Olympics. Never medaled either. So, like, _obviously_ I’m going to try to medal, but you never know how that’s going to fall out until you’re there. And, I mean, Yuna fucking Kim is here, so y’know.” Jack doesn’t know, but he doesn’t think that actually matters. “But I’m _definitely_ going to break her record, cause I’m gonna land a triple axel in an Olympic competition, I’m going to be _better_ than her in a way that’s not up for fucking debate, I’m gonna make her finally be _proud_ of me because it’ll be the first time she can’t follow up one of my events with ‘when _I_ did that,’ and then I’m coming out.”

Jack’s never met someone who talks with so much emphasis before.

“You’re not out to her?” he says instead of commenting on it like a weirdo.

“Nope.” Kent pops the P. “I’m her precious, beautiful daughter.” His voice drips with sarcasm. “Ever since I was little, I was her replacement, I was going to grow up and do all the shit she couldn’t after she got banned.”

“She what?”

“Oh yeah, not a skating fan, right.” Kenny’s eyes sparkle with mischief. “So my mother helped set up an attack on her biggest competitor. Hired some guys to beat her up with a baseball bat so she couldn’t compete. She still says she didn’t do it, but she totally did, there was enough evidence that she got permanently banned from competitive figure skating. It’s still the biggest scandal of women’s figure skating.”

“I…didn’t know women’s figure skating _had_ scandals,” says Jack.

“Weren’t _you_ the biggest scandal in men’s hockey?”

“Euh. I don’t think so?” Jack shakes his head. “I’d say there were worse. I didn’t actually do anything criminal or offensive, I just folded under pressure. If I go back to hockey, the talking heads’ll be constantly wondering if I’m about to snap.”

Kenny nods. “So like, fuck them, but also, it’s not that easy.”

Jack laughs a little. “If I didn’t care what people thought, I wouldn’t be having problems with managing anxiety in the first place.”

“Tell me about it?” Kenny looks up at him, eyes warm and inviting.

“Don’t you already know?”

“Like, the ten-second rundown from four degrees of separation away. I wanna hear it from you.”

So Jack tells him, about the anxiety meds and needing more and more, and the Memorial Cup and the day of the draft, of getting there and freaking out in the bathroom, taking so much because he knew he’d have to walk out there in front of all those people and put on a jersey and smile for the cameras, taking more and more trying to stop shaking so violently, and waking up in the hospital. Kenny listens, quiet for the longest time since Jack met him.

They talk until Jack has to leave for the game. He finds, to his surprise, that he’d rather stay and talk to Kenny, but the notion of skipping the game is anxiety-inducing, so he goes, after having a promise extracted to meet up after dinner.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he checks it at first intermission.

_come to my room after lets finish what we started_

Dinner is torturously slow.

“Are you coming back to the room tonight?” Maman asks, way too pleased with herself, and Jack feels his skin turn red. She laughs at him, but thankfully drops it there. Papa is pretending not to pay attention, for which Jack is eternally grateful. If there’s anything worse than obliquely talking about sex with his mother, it’s talking about it with his father.

He speedwalks back to Kenny’s room. Kenny is waiting outside the building for him, leaning up against a tree looking unfairly gorgeous. He doesn’t say anything when he sees Jack, just grabs his hand and tugs him inside. He flings open the room’s door and, when Jack follows him in, presses him against the wall and stretches on tiptoe to kiss him. Jack makes a noise that moves from shocked to pleased.

They break apart for air, both already panting. Jack’s skin is tingling.

“We doing this, big guy?” Kenny hums. Jack is halfway to the bed when he remembers.

“Uh, you said you don’t like your, uh, chest touched, right?” Kenny nods and bites his lip. Jack sits down on the bed. “Is there anything else like that?”

“No.” It’s almost a whisper.

“Okay, then,” says Jack, and draws Kenny into his lap.

  


“Come to my free skate tomorrow,” Kenny suggests afterwards, running his fingers over Jack’s chest. “I’ll give you a VIP pass.”

There’s a day off between the quarterfinals and the semifinals, so Jack agrees readily. Maman looks infuriatingly knowing when he tells her he wants to come.

  


They sit through skater after skater. A Korean woman takes first place. The Japanese skater ends up in second, and a Canadian woman has third. Jack crosses his fingers under his seat for Kenny.

Then, the announcer says, “Representing the United States of America, McKenzie Parson.” Kenny takes the ice and skates in slow, lazy circles. He’s wearing a gorgeous black glitter leotard with a little red skirt, hair back up in that tight bun, and he looks absolutely amazing.

Kenny takes a pose at center ice and the music starts. Jack can’t tell the difference between the jumps by looking, he’s moving too fast, but he can tell Kenny’s good, better than some of the skaters tonight, moving between spins and jumps and fancy footwork with apparent ease.

Kenny skates out the routine without tripping, and ends up back at center ice in the same pose he started at.

The music stops, and Jack claps hard. His mother gives him a knowing look that he elects to ignore. Kenny skates for the bench—no, Jack corrects himself, there are no benches here—and steps off the ice, accepting a hug and skate guards from his coach. They’re led over to the camera area to wait for their scores.

“The scores, please, for McKenzie Parson, of the United States of America,” says the announcer. “The free skating score, please.” A pause. Then, “She has earned 131.56 points in the free program, a new personal best. McKenzie Parson has a total score of 204.81 points, and is currently in third place.” Kenny punches the air with both hands, a happy grin spreading across his face, and he leans over to hug his coach.

There are only a few more skaters after Kenny, and they don’t touch his score. Kenny’s taken bronze.

Jack watches as they set up the podium and the skaters take their positions, still in their skates.

“Bronze medalist, representing the United States of America, McKenzie Parson!” says the announcer. The guy drapes the bronze medal over Kenny’s head and shakes his hand. The announcer moves on to the silver and gold medalists, but Jack’s still watching Kenny, who’s grinning to himself and running a finger along the edge of the medal like he can’t quite believe it’s real.

  


Afterwards, Jack fights his way out of the stands and gets past security by flashing his badge, but stops when he sees Kenny and his mother being waylaid by another reporter and cameraman.

“We’re here with McKenzie Parson, the recipient of the bronze medal, and her mother, another famous American figure skater, Gina Jackson,” says the reporter.

He was right, Jack thinks with a pang. He beat her, and they’re still making it about his mother.

“You just won the bronze medal, McKenzie. How are you feeling?” says the reporter.

“Amazing, it’s really awesome,” says Kenny, grinning. He’s wearing a tracksuit now, instead of that skimpy dress, but he still looks more attractive than Jack thinks he has any right to.

“Do you think you could have ranked higher?”

Kenny’s smile doesn’t falter. “I mean, anything’s possible. But today I’m ranked next to Yuna Kim, who just set the ISU world record with that score, and Mao Asada, who did _three entire triple axels_ this competition, which sets all _kinds_ of records, okay? That’s pretty freaking amazing.”

“Gina, any comment?” says the reporter, and Jack wants to scream.

“Oh, I’m so proud, of course,” says Gina, smiling.

“Seriously?” says Kenny, stepping away slightly and looking between his mother and the reporter. “I just won the bronze medal. I just did a triple axel in an Olympic competition. She never did any of that. Why are you asking her? Nobody else’s mother ends up in their interviews like this.”

“Kenny, don’t be rude,” snaps Gina.

“No, listen, I am sick of being in your shadow.” Kenny gestures emphatically. “This is my moment. _Mine._ This is it.”

“Thank you for joining us,” says the reporter hurriedly, and gestures the camera away, but Gina and Kenny barely seem to notice.

“There will be other competitions! In 2016, perhaps you can take home gold. I’m sorry I’m such a trial to you, but it isn’t my fault he asked me a question!”

“There won’t be other competitions.” Kenny looks away and crosses his arms. Jack feels helpless.

“What do you mean, there won’t be other competitions?” Gina’s voice is steely and hard.

“I’m done, Mom. This is it.” Kenny meets her eyes again.

“We’re not discussing this,” says Gina finally, and makes to walk away. “Tom will—”

“Tom knows.”

This makes Gina stop and look back.

“What?”

“Tom knows. I talked to him already. He agrees.”

“What—he would have told me!”

“I asked him not to. Because I knew you’d react like this and I wanted to enjoy my last competition.”

“Mc _Kenzie_.” Kenny doesn’t flinch, just stares unerringly into his mother’s eyes. “You’re the best female singles figure skater in America. You are not just going to give that up.”

_”I’m not a girl.”_ Kenny pales, but he keeps going. “I’m transgender, and I’m a boy, and I am not going to skate. One. More. Competition. As a girl.”

Finally, Gina seems stunned into silence. Kenny walks away, and Jack runs after him.

He catches up to him around a corner and pulls him into a hug, shielding him from view. Kenny looks up at him, eyes huge and shoulders trembling.

“I’m so proud of you,” Jack tells him.

“For the medal or for that?” says Kenny, laughing a little.

“All of it.”

Kenny buries his face in Jack’s chest and Jack hugs him tighter.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” says Kenny. “I told her. I told her I’m trans. What the fuck am I going to do now?”

“That was a very brave thing you just did, hon,” says Maman. Jack jumps. Apparently they’re back in the public area. “As for what you’re going to do now, if you need a place to stay, our house is open.”

“Really?” says Kenny, and Jack realizes his eyes are full of tears. “You don’t even know me.”

“I have a feeling I will,” says Maman, and smiles at Jack.

Jack realizes suddenly that he can say, “Maman, this is Kenny,” so he does. Maman squeezes Kenny’s shoulder and turns the smile on him. They’re the same height.

“It’s nice to meet you properly, Kenny,” she says.

Jack doesn’t want to let go, and Kenny doesn’t seem inclined to either, but eventually Maman convinces them to meet Papa for dinner. Jack worries for a second when they start walking back to the car and Kenny’s still holding his hand, but then he realizes that nobody is going to look at them twice, because all they’ll see is a straight couple. He feels instantly guilty for the relief that courses through his veins.

Papa is confused but genial when Jack re-introduces Kenny to him, exuding protectivity with his stance and his words, because Kenny is still clinging to him in a way that’s _vulnerable_ and Jack knows they’ve only just met but their collision feels predestined and inevitable. He knows in his bones that Kenny is going to be important. Probably for the rest of Jack’s life.

Canada beats the US in the final three days later and takes home gold, and Jack thinks later that it feels like a heavy-handed metaphor.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Yuna Kim took first place and did indeed set a world record with her score. Mao Asada took second place and really did set a whole host of records with her axels. I didn’t have the heart to strip those records from those women, even in fiction. The real-life bronze medalist was Canadian Joannie Rochette, and it was a big deal because her mother had literally just died right after arriving in Vancouver and she decided to go on anyway. She won the inaugural Terry Fox award along with Petra Majdič for determination and humility in the face of adversity. I almost didn’t have the heart to strip fictional Joannie of her medal, either, so in this AU, her mother lived.


	2. Home Ice

_Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies_  
_Every last time I come home_  
_I take my last chance_  
_To burn a bridge or two_  
_Only to keep myself this sick in the head_  
_’Cause I know how the words get you (off)_  
_We’re the new face of failure_  
_Prettier and younger, but not any better off_  
_Bulletproof loneliness at best, at best_  
_Me and you, setting in a honeymoon_  
_If I woke up next to you_  
~ I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying To Get You Off, Fall Out Boy

  


Kenny does come home with them. He asks Maman if she’s sure several times, then calls his mother to tell her he isn’t coming with her, and Papa buys him a plane ticket over Kenny’s protest that he can afford it now.

“You’re a young man starting out on a new path,” Papa tells him. “You’ll need your money. Let us do this for you.”

So Kenny packs up his things and says goodbye to his coach, who hugs him tightly and tells him not to let his mother talk him into going back on his decision.

“He doesn’t seem very worried about being out of a job,” Jack remarks.

“Tom? He’s got other clients, you know,” says Kenny. Jack hadn’t. “He could tell my heart wasn’t in it anymore. We agreed that I’d do the Olympics and then we’d be done.”

And then they’re all on a plane to Montréal.

Jack worries that Kenny won’t have enough things with him, but has it pointed out to him that all of them packed enough clothes and things to last several weeks, and of course Kenny has his skates and his bronze medal.

“I’ll go back for my other trophies eventually,” he says, shrugging. “It’s not like she’ll get rid of them.” He moves into their second spare bedroom without fanfare and almost immediately cuts off his hair.

Jack catches him at it the first morning back, sitting on the bathroom sink, half his long blond hair flowing over his shoulder and half lying in a pile in the sink, the golden locks looking strange and alien divorced from a head.

“Can you get the back?” asks Kenny, spotting him in the mirror.

“I’ll probably be bad at it,” says Jack, but he takes the scissors and helps take the remaining hair from ‘short but girly’ to ‘messy but boyish.’ “You know, you could have gone to a barber,” he points out, but he isn’t surprised, somehow, that Kenny wanted to do it himself. He watches him scoop up the pile of hair and unceremoniously stuff it in the garbage before turning a beautiful, wicked smile on Jack. Jack has to kiss it, so he does. Kenny jumps a little but kisses him back, threading his hands through Jack’s hair.

“We’re still doing this, then?” he asks when they break apart. Jack frowns.

“Um, yes? Do you not want to?”

“I want to,” says Kenny, and kisses him again, short and hungry. “I just wasn’t sure. We met under pretty-clearly-a-hookup circumstances, and now I live with you, maybe you don’t want a…” He trails off and waves a hand to indicate himself.

“Boyfriend?” finishes Jack. Kenny blinks.

“…Yeah,” he says, quiet suddenly.

Jack shrugs. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,” he admits. “I just want to keep doing this.” Kenny grins at him again and tugs him back down for more kisses.

  


Jack takes him to bed that night. The sex is still amazing. Kenny flushes beautifully, sweat beading on his forehead as Jack teases him, and Jack wants to lick every inch of him, so he does. 

  


They make a token effort not to let Jack’s parents catch them in the same bed, and they do a lot of laundry and leave Jack’s window open and keep the PDA to a minimum, but they don’t try too hard to keep it a secret. Kenny goes back to his own bed a lot of nights, but sometimes the sex is devastatingly intimate, with passionate kisses and pulled hair, but also gentle touches with shaking hands and voices that sound like they’re about to break, sex that makes Jack think of that Torah verse about _become one flesh._

Those nights, they cling to each other until morning.

  


Kenny wants to get a job. It makes a certain amount of sense, Jack decides. He probably doesn’t want to be dependent on the Zimmermanns forever.

But he can’t, because, as Papa explains, he’s an American citizen and would need a work visa.

“Wait,” says Kenny, “That means I can’t just stay, right? I told the border people I was just here for the Olympics.”

“You’re fine for the next six months,” says Papa. “Five and a half, maybe. After that, you’ll have to sort something out or go back to the States.”

So Kenny researches living in Canada and asks questions like “Does the Olympics count as Canadian work experience?” and “Wait, do you have to be able to speak French?” and Jack tries not to think too hard about his dual citizenship.

  


They go to the mall and walk hand-in-hand, stopping for ice cream and to peer in the windows of the stores. Kenny complains about the music—some pop artist—and Jack just watches him and enjoys the soaring feeling in his chest.

  


One day, Kenny drags Jack into a tattoo parlor.

“I want, like, a garden,” he tells the artist, leaning over the counter on his elbows. He pitches his voice lower than usual, and Jack almost asks him why. “Like, sleeves of gardens.”

“That’ll be multiple sittings,” says the guy. “And it’ll be expensive.”

They agree on part of a design that Kenny can get today, and that he can afford.

“Name for the order?” says the artist.

“Kent Parson.”

  


Jack notices his parents look at each other nervously when Kenny comes home showing off his tattoo, but he doesn’t ask.

“Why a tattoo?” he asks Kenny curiously when they’re alone.

“I’ve wanted one for a long time,” says Kent. “And I saw the shop and figured, there’s no one stopping me now.”

  


Jack wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and catches Kent stifling sobs in the other bedroom. “What’s wrong?” he murmurs, coming to sit on the bed beside the trembling lump.

“I can’t do the circuit anymore,” gasps Kenny. “Not with a tattoo. I can’t go back.”

“You don’t want to go back,” says Jack. “You quit.”

“Fuck you, you don’t understand.”

That stings.

“What’s there to understand? Make up your mind. Do you want to do the circuit or not?”

“Get _out,_ ” says Kent, and shoves at him. Jack storms back to his own room in a huff.

  


“I don’t understand,” he complains to his mother, after she pries the reason for his grumpiness out of him the next day. “He quit. He fired his coach and walked out on his mother, and now he’s upset because he can’t change his mind? He knew that when he got the tattoo, why did he get it if he was going to throw a fit about it?”

“It’s not always that easy, Jack,” says Maman gently. “People grieve when they shut the door on a big part of their life, even when they know it’s time. How would you like it if you hit your head and lost your peripheral vision, and you couldn’t ever play in the NHL?”

“I already can’t ever play in the NHL,” growls Jack, even though he knows it isn’t true. And then, because his mother is giving him that pitying look he hates, “That’s a very specific example.”

She laughs. “It’s from a movie. Cutting Edge. You should ask Kenny if he’s seen it.”

Kenny has seen Cutting Edge, and when he finds out that Jack hasn’t, he bounds down to ask Maman if they have a copy, and then he drags Jack to sit in front of the television and watch it.

In Jack’s opinion, there’s too much figure skating and not enough hockey, but he doesn’t hate it. Kent clearly adores it, speaking lines along with the characters and staring at the screen avidly, but when Jack comments on it, he affects a casual shrug.

“It’s okay, I guess.”

It’s only afterward that Jack realizes that they never resolved their fight.

  


Kent kisses him softly, sweetly that night, and Jack holds him like something precious, because he is. Kent touches him like he’s worshiping at an altar, and Jack touches him back the same way and marvels that this beautiful, spellbinding creature wants him back.

  


Jack catches Kent layering sports bras and thinks, _That can’t be healthy._ He looks it up, and it isn’t, so he does a little research and buys Kent a gift card to a store that sells binders, because he doesn’t want to guess the measurements and there’s no way to take them without Kent asking why. Kent tears up and tells Jack he doesn’t want charity in the same breath as thanking him over and over.

  


Kent drags him into a little restaurant/bar called the Tucan, reads the menu, and tells the waitress, “Quisiera las tres pupusas, por favor, de queso, y un Pepsi.”

“For here or to go?” she asks, and Kenny’s face falls.

“For here,” he answers, and his voice is still thick with the accent.

“And for you?” she asks Jack.

“Uh, I’ll have the same,” says Jack, and hopes it was the right decision. Kenny drags him to a table, shoulders slumped in dejection.

“I hate it when they do that,” he says quietly. “It’s my language too, why won’t anybody let me speak it?” Jack’s heart aches for him.

“Your language?” he asks, because he isn’t anywhere near qualified to answer the question.

“My mom’s name is Parson now because of my stepdad and it was Jackson when she was competing, before she got married, but it was Gina Vasquez in between, my dad was Andreas Vasquez Arenas and I was a fucking idiot who decided to stop speaking Spanish in kindergarten and lost almost all of it before he died and I couldn’t change my mind. I started trying to learn it back when I was sixteen,” says Kenny to the table, glaring down at his folded arms. “And now I don’t know if no one will speak it back to me because I’m white or because I haven’t gotten the sentence exactly right, even though I have a native fucking accent, or close enough.”

“You aren’t white, though, right? You’re passing,” says Jack.

“What’s the difference?” says Kenny, shrugging. “Race isn’t a real biological thing, right, it’s just a way of talking about the boxes people put you in when they see you, and what specific kind of shit happens because of that. Literally nobody looks at me and thinks Mexican.”

Jack has no answer for that, so he just nudges his foot against Kenny’s.

Later, he asks, “Was that a date?”

Kenny startles. “I just wanted lunch,” he says. “But it can be a date if you want.”

All of a sudden, Jack wants that.

“Then it was a date,” he says. “We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah?”

Jack shrugs. “That’s what couples do, right?”

  


“Can we go skating?” Kent asks one day over breakfast. Jack startles. He hasn’t been on the ice since…crisse, since the Memorial Cup? That doesn’t seem right. But he racks his brain and he can’t think of anything else. That’s _months_ he hasn’t been on the ice. The last time that happened, Jack was probably a year old. What if he’s forgotten how? What if he’s a terrible player now, rusty beyond what practice can fix?

The more he thinks about it, the more his hands start to shake and the tiny knot of fear in the back of his head grows.

“You okay?” asks Kenny, staring at him.

“Fine,” grits out Jack from between clenched teeth. Crisse, does he hate that question now.

“You don’t look fine.”

“It’s none of your fucking business,” snaps Jack, standing up from the table and stalking away.

“Fuck you,” snaps Kent in return, but Jack can hear him following. “Don’t shut me out.” Jack walks into his own bedroom and shuts the door behind himself, but Kent opens it again, walks in, shuts it behind him, and slams Jack into the bed. Jack sits down in surprise, and Kent climbs into his lap and seizes him by the shirt collar. And kisses him, forcefully and angrily, biting down on Jack’s lip when he kisses back.

It’s the first time they solve an argument with sex, but it won’t be the last.

  


“You can’t tell me you don’t miss the ice,” says Kenny, when they’re lying beside each other, sated and sweaty. Jack waits for his anxiety to kick in, but he’s still too high on the endorphins and it doesn’t come.

And he does, he finds, when he lets himself think about it. There’s nothing like skating: the bite of the blades into the ice, the speed, the effortlessness in every pivot and swerve.

“Whatever,” he says instead. Kenny smirks at him like he thinks he’s won.

  


The next morning, Kenny blows him, drawing it out, taking Jack to the edge and then backing off, over and over until Jack is squirming, desperate for release.

“Come on,” he mutters, trying to keep his voice down for his parents. “Let me come.”

“Kay,” says Kent, and sucks hard. And then he wraps his hand around the base of Jack’s cock, making him _writhe._

“Kent, what the fuck, crisse de calice,” says Jack. Or perhaps whimpers.

“Take me skating today,” says Kent.

“What?”

“Promise you’ll take me skating, and I’ll let you come.”

“Fine, fuck, I promise,” says Jack, and Kenny takes him over the edge. Jack thinks maybe he comes harder than he ever has.

“Cool,” says Kenny, flopping beside him. “Half an hour enough time for you to recover and get ready to go?”

“Huh?”

“We’re going skating. You promised.”

“Fuck you,” Jack says without heat.

“Maybe later,” says Kenny cheerfully, and bounds out of bed.

“You can’t wear a binder while skating, you know.”

Kenny rolls his eyes. “I know. I’ll just wear my jacket.” He pulls out the top half of the tracksuit he’d worn at the Olympics. His breasts aren’t big, and the jacket mostly hides them.

  


The rink is free except for skate rental, and they have their own skates, so they go straight past the lobby and into the rink. The cold hits Jack’s face like a caress and he inhales deeply.

They don’t talk while they lace up their skates. A little boy stares.

“Mama, why do they take so long to tie their skates?” he asks loudly.

“When you get this big, there’s a lot of laces,” Kent calls back. “And when you’re as good at skating as we are, you want it really tight.”

“How good are you?” asks the boy.

“I’ll show you,” says Kent. “Give me a minute.”

He steps on the ice and glides into some footwork Jack recognizes from his long program, then begins a tight spin that he sits down into and straightens back up. People back up and give him room. Jack steps on the ice after him and glances over to see the little boy’s face. It’s priceless.

“Can you do a jump?” the boy asks.

“Yup,” says Kent. “There’s not enough space, though. Lots of people here.”

“EVERYBODY MAKE ROOM,” bellows the child. “HE’S GONNA DO A JUMP.”

Kent starts laughing, burying his face in one hand. But people are moving off to the sides, gathering like an eager audience. “Okay, okay, give me a minute! I can’t do it completely cold!” He loops the rink a few times, gathering speed, and soon everyone is watching. He skates toward center ice, faster and faster, then flings himself up and around, snapping out a tight spin before landing in an arabesque. The rink explodes with applause.

Jack realizes with a start that he’s on an ice rink and absolutely nobody is paying attention to him.

Kent’s audience loses interest quickly enough, and Jack joins him, weaving through people, and _oh,_ the _snic_ of skates against ice is like music. The lack of friction beneath the blades is the closest Jack will ever get to flying. It’s as though the ice is singing to him, _welcome back, you’ve been gone so long._

He’s not certain about hockey, but skating? Jack will never give up skating, as long as he can. Never again.

Kenny grins at him as if he knows what Jack is thinking, and his smile is blinding. Jack takes his hand, and they skate together, lost in the crowd on the ice as though they were any other couple.

  


Kent is talking to Maman across the room when he goes red as a tomato, all at once. Jack’s curiosity is piqued.

“What was that about?” he asks when Kent gets back. Kent’s blush, which had started to fade, comes back in full force.

“She asked me if I needed birth control,” he mutters. Now it’s Jack’s face that’s burning.

“We use condoms.”

“Condoms break.” Kent shrugs. “Anyway, it’s fine, I have an IUD. Not that you’re allowed to go bare.”

Jack doesn’t know what that means, and decides he doesn’t need to. Kent’s not going to get pregnant, that’s the important part.

  


Kent gets the next part of his tattoo done.

“You’re going to run out of sponsorship money,” says Jack.

“Do something for yourself for once in your life, Jack,” snaps Kent.

  


He doesn’t mean anything by it, but the directive stays with Jack. _Do something for yourself for once in your life._

He thinks about going back to hockey.

He thinks about never going back to hockey.

He watches Kent stare at the list of occupations that Canada will sponsor a work visa for and list the classes he took in high school over and over. Listens to him wonder whether Tim Horton’s will ask for work authorization, and if they’ll have him deported if they find out he doesn’t have any.

  


A little less than a month after Kent comes to live with them, he comes out of the bathroom moody and sullen, and pushes past Jack to whisper to Maman, who takes him upstairs. When he comes back, he sits at the kitchen table with his arms wrapped around his middle, and Maman hands him two Advil and a glass of water. Kenny downs them, but doesn’t look at Jack.

“I can’t get hormone therapy when I don’t live here, can I?” he asks dully.

“No, hon,” says Maman, smiling sadly. “I very much doubt that.”

  


“I wish Jack showed half as much interest in working as you do, Kent,” says Papa once. Jack tosses the book he’s reading to the side and storms upstairs.

When Kent comes up, he’s still mad.

“Go away.”

“No. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’d be fine if you’d stop fucking talking about work,” snaps Jack. “Congratulations, my parents like you better.”

“Yeah, well, maybe they should,” says Kenny, and shuts the door hard while Jack is busy reeling.

Later, he finds Jack sitting on the floor, shaking, and sits next to him.

They still don’t talk about it.

  


Kent goes back for his third sitting. Flowers and vines cover both arms, ending in a sprinkling of leaves at the backs of his hands and on his shoulders. Jack doesn’t say anything, but Kent still glares at him, daring him to.

  


“Have you thought about applying to college?” Maman asks them both over dinner.

“I don’t have transcripts or anything,” says Kenny. “I was homeschooled.”

“Really?” Jack…hadn’t known that.

“You can’t figure skate at that level and go to school, Jack,” says Kent, staring at him. “Did you go to school in Juniors?”

“Of course. We took work with us when we had to travel.”

“Obviously you weren’t on the ice thirty hours a week,” says Kent, shaking his head. “Homeschool takes up a lot less time because you don’t have to go to lecture and _then_ study the material, you just _study the material._ ”

“Plenty of homeschooled kids go to college,” interrupts Maman. “There are ways, if you want to. That’s a way to stay in Canada, though you’d have to wait a year.”

“You could play hockey in college,” Kent reminds Jack, who is busy stewing over the thought that Kent got _more ice time_ than he did growing up.

“Oh, yes. My alma mater had a division one hockey team,” says Maman. “Terrors of the school. No social skills. But they went to the Frozen Four several times when I was there.”

“Were you really on the ice thirty hours a week?”

“Twenty-five on average, but who’s counting?”

  


Playoffs start. Jack doesn’t watch.

  


Kent’s mother calls.

Really, Jack thinks, they should have expected that. But somehow he’d been imagining Kent’s mother as out of the picture.

“My name is Kent,” Kent snaps at her, pacing the room. Jack perches on an armchair and tries to fill in the other end of the conversation.

“I’m not going back. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, Mom.” A breath. “I cut off my hair and got a tattoo and I’m going to go on testosterone as soon as I can.” He winces and pulls the phone away from his ear for a moment while Gina Parson shouts audibly.

He’s quiet for a moment, then, “I have a place to stay.” Another pause. “I miss you too.” Jack startles. He does? “I’m your _son._ Sooner you accept that, sooner I’ll talk to you. You’re using up my minutes. Bye.” He hangs up on her. “On an international call, too,” he says to Jack. “I don’t think I even _have_ minutes for that. Whatever, she’s still getting the bill.”

Jack holds out his arms and Kent goes to him. Jack wraps him in a hug, trying to engulf him, to surround him and keep out anything trying to hurt him.

  


Jack’s parents are out one evening when Kenny jumps him in the kitchen, just turns him around and kisses him like he’s dying, then unbuttons Jack’s jeans.

“Calisse,” says Jack. Kent passes him a condom, then shucks off his own sweatpants.

“Shouldn’t we go upstairs?” says Jack.

“No one’s gonna catch us,” says Kent. “Do me here.”

“Here?”

“Scared, Zimms?”

“Zimms?”

“I hear an echo,” chirps Kent. “C’mon, Jack, fuck me on the floor.”

“Why? There’s a very comfortable bed just upstairs. Two of them, even.”

“Because we _can,_ dumbass.”

So Jack does. It’s hard and uncomfortable, but the thrill is undeniably there.

“Admit it, I have the best ideas,” hisses Kent, and bites him.

“Crisse, I love you,” says Jack, and comes.

When he’s down from the high, Kent isn’t touching himself, or relaxing into the sated puddle that means he’s come. He’s just staring at Jack.

“What?”

“Did you mean that?”

“What?” Then he remembers. “Oh. Fuck.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” says Kent, and his eyes skitter away, which is maybe what makes Jack blurt out,

“Yeah. I did.”

Kent’s eyes lock on his. They’re a bluish grey today, Jack thinks. Then Kent starts laughing. Stung, Jack pulls out and ties up the condom.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you told me you love me while balls deep inside me on your kitchen floor,” says Kent, and, okay, that is pretty funny. Jack’s lips twitch in spite of himself.

Kent waits until they’re in the shower to say, “By the way, I love you too, moron,” and flicks water in Jack’s eyes.

  


“I found a job for you, Jack!” says Papa one day in May, tossing a brochure at him. Jack catches it, turns it right way round, and unfolds it.

“Hockey camp?”

“Yes, summer camp. They need coaches.”

 _”Robert,”_ says Maman. Papa looks like a chastised dog not sure what it’s done wrong.

“Yes, mon canard?”

Maman marches him upstairs.

“They do know I’m not going to break if they mention hockey in front of me, right?” says Jack, staring up after them.

“I think your mom’s just worried because this is like, a job,” says Kenny, reading over his shoulder. “Not just watching a game. Damn. Think they have a figure skating camp, too? Not that it matters when I can’t fuckin’ work.”

Jack has a crazy idea.

  


“So,” says the camp director. “You’re Jack Zimmermann.”

Jack swallows down his discomfort. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, I already know you know how to play hockey, son. Top draft prospect. To be honest, I’d love to have a high draft prospect coach here. My hesitation is that these are kids.”

“Sir?” Is he asking if Jack is good with kids? Jack isn’t amazing with kids, but he thinks he can work with them on _hockey._

The director sighs. “Son, ordinarily I’d consider it none of my business. But the rumor is you’re a drug addict. So. Are you someone I can have around children?”

Oh.

“It was prescription medication, I’m on something different now, and I’ve been through a course of rehab,” Jack says shortly. “I can pass any screening you want.”

The director nods. “I need to run a background check anyway, it’s the law when working with children,” he says. “It’ll turn up if you’re lying. So, provisionally on that coming back clean, you’ve got the job if you want it.”

“I have, euh, a request,” says Jack carefully.

“I’m listening.”

“I have a friend who wants to learn hockey, but he doesn’t really have the money to take classes,” says Jack. “And I don’t think he’ll take charity. But I’m willing to take his tuition out of my pay. I mean, I’m willing to not get paid.”

“A friend your age?” says the director, frowning.

“Yeah, he’s a little old for the class, but he was a competitive figure skater as of a couple weeks ago,” says Jack, shrugging self-consciously. “So I thought he could like, kind of TA? Help with the skating part and learn the hockey part.”

The director shrugs. “No skin off my nose. Bring him around for orientation.”

  


“Kent Parson,” says Kenny, shaking the director’s hand, and Jack feels a flush of pride.

  


The group is about fifteen kids between nine and twelve who are just learning to skate. None of them know or care who Jack is, or at least they don’t let on if they do.

Jack has to tell himself more than a few times that _these are kids, they aren’t going to be amazing, don’t be too hard on them_ but nobody _else_ has to tell him that except for Kent once, so he calls that progress.

One of the kids, Bryan, is something of a spitfire and he wants to do everything almost before Jack finishes explaining it. He spends a lot of time falling on his face, but it doesn’t seem to discourage him. Jack rotates them through, making them take turns playing the goalie. Another kid, Stanley, really likes it in the net, and gets the biggest grin on his face every time he makes a save. After three days of putting up with Stanley’s pout every time Jack rotates him out of the net, Jack identifies another two kids who seem to like it, and divides the group into defense and offense groups. The three goalies take turns in the net, the other two practicing offense while they wait patiently for their turn, and Jack stops asking the other kids to do it. Everybody is noticeably happier with this arrangement. Even Stanley stops pouting now that his turn comes much more often.

Kent moves seamlessly between lining up with the kids when Jack is teaching stick-handling and breaking off to work one-on-one with kids who are afraid of falling. He moves like a dancer, and he makes Jack’s mouth dry.

“I can’t believe my skates aren’t falling apart,” he tells Jack after two weeks. “Boots don’t _last_ this long. It’s _June._ I haven’t replaced them since _January._ ”

“They do when you’re not putting that much stress on them,” says Jack.

“Sounds like a bad metaphor,” says Kent.

  


The Blackhawks beat the Flyers for the Stanley Cup. Jack only knows because his father is thrilled.

  


He goes to work and teaches his kids how to do (and defend against) a wraparound. Bryan pulls it off beautifully, flipping the puck under Stanley’s glove and screeching loudly when he realizes he’s scored. Stanley’s mouth drops open.

“Again!” he demands.

Jack grins all the way back home.

  


Kent’s mother calls again. Jack sits in the armchair and waits.

“Are you ready to be less transphobic?” Kent asks bluntly. Perhaps thirty seconds pass. “You can call me Kenny. That’s okay.” Beat. “Yeah, I know.” Another ten seconds or so. “I’m helping teach this hockey camp for kids. I can’t just abandon them. But after that’s over.” Jack’s stomach drops. “Yeah, okay. Love you too. Bye.”

“You’re leaving?” Jack blurts out.

“My six months is up in August,” Kenny says flatly. “My mother’s willing to try. It’s the best option.”

Jack hasn’t forgotten that Kenny can’t stay, exactly. It just doesn’t seem real. Kenny walks over and takes his hands, and Jack feels like something in his chest rips.

“Come with me,” says Kenny softly. Jack blinks and stares up at him. His eyes are the palest green.

“I—” Jack stops.

_Do something for yourself for once._

“Okay.”

  


Jack’s parents look very alarmed when he tells them he’s going with Kenny.

Maman starts a sentence and cuts herself off several times.

“Jack,” Papa says finally, “You can’t just up and move to the States without a plan.”

“I can get a job,” Jack says. “I have citizenship.”

“And do you have a place to stay? Is Mrs. Parson expecting you?”

“We’ll work it out, calisse,” says Jack.

“No, don’t you swear at me, Jack, I’m your father and I’m concerned that you’re making a reckless decision.”

“So what!” says Jack. “At least it’s _my_ decision and not yours!”

Papa looks as though he’s been slapped.

  


Everything is stilted in the Zimmermann household after that. Jack has a series of anxiety attacks, locked in the bathroom where no one can see, and doesn’t think about how they’re coming more and more often.

  


Jack doesn’t apologize. Papa doesn’t speak to him if he doesn’t have to.

  


Jack kisses Kenny’s tattoos, tracing the vines with his tongue. Kenny shivers and lets him.

“You should get one,” he breathes.

Jack, unlike Kenny, both has money to spend and is making more, even if it is only a pittance after Kenny’s tuition.

And, Jack can’t lie, Kenny’s sleeves are hot as fuck, and they’ve grown on him more and more since he got them.

“What should I get?”

“I dunno. Whatever you want.”

“Why did you want a garden?”

Kenny pulls his arms back and rolls away from Jack.

“Why?” Jack presses.

“I don’t know. It’s like, a living thing. Growing. Reminds me that I still can.”

Jack wants something that means he doesn’t have to be the thing he was raised to be.

He finds a stanza of poetry in French that he likes. It’s Parisian French, but he decides that’s okay. He gets it written in script over his bicep.

Des humains suffrages,  
Des communs élans  
Là tu te dégages  
Et voles selon.

His mother starts crying when she sees it.

  


Camp ends. Most of the kids hug them both goodbye. Bryan and Stanley cling extra tightly, and Jack hugs them back.

Camp ends, and Kent gets on a plane to New York. Jack goes with him. They take a cab so Jack doesn’t have to ask his parents to drive them.

  


Gina Parson startles when she sees Kent at the airport.

“Oh my word,” she says weakly. “You weren’t kidding.” Kent shoves his hands in his pockets and looks uncomfortable. Gina turns to look at Jack. “Jack Zimmermann,” she says. “What a surprise.”

“Hi,” says Jack.

“He’s my boyfriend,” says Kent, and takes Jack’s hand in front of the world.

“You might have warned me,” says Gina. Jack thinks she might have a point.

  


“Are you just visiting, then?” she says in the car. “Only, one doesn’t bring their boyfriend home to move in.”

“I’m going to find a job,” Jack volunteers. “I won’t be in your hair for long.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” she says.

  


Mr. Parson is reading the newspaper when they get home. He spots Kent and Jack overtop of it, and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Ben, this is Jack Zimmermann,” says Gina. “Kenny’s boyfriend. Apparently.”

Mr. Parson just stares at them, eyes flitting over Kenny’s tattooed arms and choppy hair, then scanning Jack from head to toe. Then he takes a breath, says, “Welcome home, Kenny,” and disappears behind the paper again as though it’s all just too much to deal with tonight.

The Parsons don’t have a spare room, so Jack sleeps in Kent’s bed. Which he was going to do anyway, but it’s nice not to feel like he has to sneak around.

  


They’re all set to go job hunting the next day, except Kent realizes they don’t have resumes. So they stay in and do that instead, poring over examples on the internet.

On the advice of Mr. Parson, they hit the street, walking into businesses and handing out resumes. The local coffee shop takes copies, but never calls. The same is true of half a dozen fast food restaurants. Other places won’t even take one, telling them there are no vacancies.

“I guess we don’t have enough experience?” says Jack, staring at a resume.

“Nobody wants to hire a kid who looks like a teenage delinquent,” says Gina bluntly. A cold chill passes over Jack. Kenny stands up and storms to their room, slamming the door behind him. Jack’s breath starts catching in his throat, and he rides the attack out alone.

  


“I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this,” Jack says later, staring at the lines of text on his arm.

“Oh, yeah, blame me,” spits Kent. “All my fault. It was your fucking decision.”

“You encouraged me—”

“You’re a grown-ass adult! You don’t get to pawn your shitty decision making off on me!”

“Oh, now you’re willing to admit it was a shitty decision, you with your three-part full sleeve shit going on.”

“My sleeves were not a shitty decision!”

“You just said—”

“I don’t regret it! So what if people think I’m a delinquent? At least I’m not perfect, beautiful McKenzie Parson anymore.”

Jack nearly, nearly says _You’ll always be perfect, beautiful McKenzie Parson,_ just to make it hurt as badly as he can, but he makes himself shut his mouth.

He hears Kent crying in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t comfort him.

  


Kent wakes him up by kissing him, hard. The air is sharp and pointed, and the sex is rough and angry, and they’re the only two people in the world. Kent glares at Jack even as he rides him. Jack bunches his shirt in his fists so he doesn’t whiten his knuckles in Kenny’s skin.

  


They wear long sleeves when they go out. Jack doesn’t know if he’s imagining that people are friendlier.

  


“Why is this so fucking difficult,” Jack complains.

“Now you get it,” grumbles Kent from beside him on the bed. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Relying on someone else’s family for bed and board because you can’t get hired?”

“I’ll get hired,” says Jack stubbornly. “I’m an American citizen.”

“So what.” Kent stares up at the ceiling.

“So it’s actually legal to hire me. I’m not delusional.”

“Fuck off! I am not delusional!”

“No, you just think you can drop your success in the trash, run away to Canada, and make something of yourself.” Jack knows he’s being cruel, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. He sits up instead and turns away.

“As opposed to you? Couldn’t fucking handle the pressure of yours? You had everything handed to you on a plate and you torched it!”

“I have an anxiety disorder!” yells Jack, standing up and stalking away. “I didn’t choose that!” He hears Kenny stand up behind him.

“Stop kidding yourself! You’ll never be worth anything!” It hits like a hard check, and Jack lashes out in turn.

“Neither will you!”

They stop and stare at each other, chests heaving. There are tears running down Kenny’s cheeks, and he swipes his hand over his face.

“I think you should go home,” says Kenny finally, and he won’t look at Jack. Jack’s heart drops to his stomach.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” he says quietly.

He doesn’t say _are we breaking up_ because he’s afraid of the answer.

  


He texts his mother so he doesn’t have to hear her voice.

_Can I come home?_

She responds within minutes.

_Oh honey. Of course. Please._

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack’s tattoo:  
> From human prayers,  
> From common spirits  
> You free yourself  
> And thus you fly.  
> Arthur Rimbaud - L'Eternité


	3. Faber

_Advertise what makes you crazy_  
_So I can second guess my focus_  
_Are you gonna hire me?_  
_I let you in_  
_Somehow I sit down_  
_Revoke the time and space for you to just_  
_Feel it in your name_  
_Now I'm the ref and a phone call cutting out_  
_Back on the bench I fall into the month I think about_  
_How I sold seven doves when I was lying on your back_  
_I'll meet you in the morning_  
_Figure out what gets me past_  
_A second in the shade_  
_Fucking up a useful place_  
_Purgatory please me_  
_I let it live like a payday of mine_  
_I can't let it be_  
_I'm high scoring memory_  
~Hire, Girlpool

  


Jack gets off a plane in Montréal–Trudeau and collects his baggage before he makes himself look around for his parents.

It’s not that hard. His father is tall, like Jack himself, even if he is wearing a New York Yankees cap as a disguise, and his mother’s blonde hair is distinctive next to him. Like him and Kenny, Jack thinks for some reason. If Kenny had been a girl, like Jack thought when they met, they’d look an awful lot like his parents.

He shakes away the errant thought and makes himself walk toward them, powering through the shaking in his hands. His mother catches sight of him a few metres away and darts toward him, pushing through passerby and flinging herself on Jack in a hug. Abruptly a lump forms in his throat as he hugs her back.

“We were so worried, baby,” she says. “We’re so glad you’re home.”

His father catches up to them and draws them both into a hug.

“It’s good to see you, son,” he says gruffly.

“Je suis désolé, Papa,” says Jack thickly.

“Je t'aime, Jack,” his father says simply, and Jack knows he’s forgiven.

  


They tread on tiptoe around each other for the first two days, but Jack rather suspects his parents had enough of that after the overdose, and soon it’s as though none of it had ever happened, as though Kenny never entered their lives like a tornado. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Sometimes, it makes Jack feel as lost as he did right after the overdose.

“I liked getting to teach the kids,” Jack says apropos of nothing to his father, who stops reading his book and nods. “I think I want hockey in my life. But I don’t want to go to the draft.”

“You could look for a full-time coaching job,” his father suggests. “For an Atom team or something.”

Jack appreciates his father more than he has words for, and he impulsively sits down next to him and hugs him. Papa puts down his book and hugs him back.

“I could play in a rec league,” he says.

“You could,” agrees Papa.

“Or I could do NCAA.”

“That’s a little higher-stakes than rec league hockey,” remarks his father wryly.

Jack smiles, amused.

“College might be good for me. To have something in my life that isn’t hockey, something structured.”

Papa just watches him, free of judgment or opinion.

  


Kenny texts him.

_Can we skype_

Jack doesn’t answer him for half a day, debating with himself.

“Do you think he was bad for me?” he asks his mother while helping with the dishes.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she answers. “You were in a vulnerable place, and you clearly had an intense relationship. I think only you can say how much of the problem was Kent and how much was the situation, or the fact that you were in a relationship at all.”

Jack thinks about it. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but he knows that when he thinks of seeing Kenny’s face, it fills him with longing. So he texts back.

_Yes_

  


Kenny looks small on the screen, withdrawn, less somehow.

“I miss you,” is the first thing he says.

“I miss you too,” says Jack, because he knows that, at least, is true.

“I’m not sure I’m sorry for kicking you out, though.”

That stings, but Jack nods. It’s fair.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay, actually? Mom and I talked some. She’s not going to change her whole personality or anything, but she’s kind of accepted that I’m not who she wants me to be, and she has to deal if she wants to have me in her life. I guess vanishing for five months has that effect.” He smiles that one-sided smile. “Anyway, I have an appointment with a therapist next month. So hopefully I can get started on HRT soon.”

Jack smiles. “I’m glad,” he says, heartfelt.

“You? Your parents kill you for jetting off?”

“No, actually. They probably should have been madder at me.”

“Do they blame me for corrupting their goody-two-shoes son?”

“Amazingly, my mother is giving you all the credit she possibly can, given that from her perspective it kind of does look like that.”

Kent shrugs. “Well, that’s good, I guess. Wouldn’t have blamed them, after I sent you home like that.”

“We weren’t in a good place,” Jack says. Kenny laughs and shakes his head.

“Nope.” He sobers. “That wasn’t okay, the shit you said to me, Zimms. Or the shit I said back. So I’m sorry for that.”

“I’m sorry too,” says Jack instantly.

“It turns out that you get me more than anyone. And that also means you know exactly how to make me hurt.”

“And vice versa.”

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Fuck, this feels like a breakup.”

“Is it…not being a breakup…on the table?” asks Jack hesitantly. Kenny rests his chin on his hands.

“Well, yeah, if you want. I still fucking love you, even if you’re a bastard sometimes.”

A little blanket of warmth wraps around Jack’s heart.

“I love you, too.”

Kenny smiles sadly at him. “Maybe we were just going too fast. Too deep, too soon.”

“So can we start over? Do this again, slowly?”

“How? I don’t know about you, Zimms, but I want more than long-distance Skype for the foreseeable future. And moving to be together kind of wrecked the going slow part already.”

The answer is already forming in Jack’s mind.

“Come to college with me.”

Kenny blinks. “…Huh,” he says. “That might actually work.”

“We can’t room together,” says Jack.

“Jumping ahead of yourself a little, there, bud. Where would we go?”

“Anywhere with a hockey team.”

Kent laughs. “You’re very predictable sometimes.”

Jack shrugs. Kent will have to get used to how much space hockey is capable of taking up in Jack’s brain if they want to make this work.

“We’ll apply to a bunch so we can have a good chance of getting into the same one.”

“Somewhere where we can be out, I don’t want to hide when there’s a million queer-friendly colleges out there.”

They start making plans.

  


There are six colleges that have division I hockey teams and make the 50 most LGBT-friendly schools list Kent finds somewhere. They throw out Princeton on the basis that it only takes five percent of applicants or something ridiculous, because it does in fact cost money to apply to college, and apply to the other five.

Ohio State doesn’t take Kent. University of Wisconsin waitlists Jack.

  


Jack isn’t in high school anymore, so he’s not going to get recruited the normal way, but Papa reached out to the coaches of the three schools and now he’s got interviews with all of them. Jack tries not to feel guilty about that.

“I just want to keep my head down and play hockey again, but not have to make a living off of it, necessarily,” he says.

“And you think you’re ready to play at a competitive level again?” says Coach Hall, head coach for Samwell. Jack reminds himself that they have to think of what’s best for the team.

“I do,” he says instead of snapping. “I’ve put a lot of work into taking better care of my mental health and knowing when things are going badly, and how to handle it. And the pressure of the NHL is much worse than the NCAA. No offense.”

“None taken,” says the assistant coach, Murray. “Contrary to popular belief, we do want our players to have some life outside of hockey. Major juniors…doesn’t, really.”

“Right,” says Jack, relieved. “And, uh, my dad didn’t…”

“Set every NCAA record in the last ten years?”

“Yeah.”

“And even if he had, a quarter of the people would know his name as do now, because NCAA, like juniors, is much less in the public eye.”

Jack nods. They get it.

  


“So, we have UMass, UVM, and Samwell,” says Kenny over Skype. “How do we decide?”

“Visit?”

“Yeah, all right.”

  


They go to the admitted students day at UMass, and the only good thing about it is getting to see each other, because the dean’s speech is basically “We have everything so if you can’t find it it’s your own fault,” and Jack knows that he’d have a reasonable amount of support as a student athlete, but he still nopes out with a vengeance. Any school that’s managing to trigger his anxiety from the _admitted students day_ is not someplace he wants to spend four years.

But it can’t take away the fact that Kent flung himself into Jack’s arms when they laid eyes on each other for the first time in two months, and Jack felt like he could breathe again and had never noticed that he couldn’t before. He and Kenny share a hotel room and spend hours touching and kissing, able at last to put the remains of their fight behind them in the apology of a gentle touch.

  


There’s nothing _bad_ about UVM’s admitted students tour, but it isn’t that memorable. At Samwell, on the other hand, an exuberant dude flings an arm around Jack’s shoulders and talks his ear off for twenty minutes before Jack finally learns his name. And then must make a face, because the guy says, “I know, dude, it’s totally shitty.”

Which makes some other potential teammate say, “What is?”

To which the first guy says, “My name.”

And the second dude says, “Your name’s Shitty? Hey, hey losers! Meet Shitty!”

The arena is called Faber, and it has giant windows letting the natural light in. They let him do a faceoff during practice, and the whole thing feels _right._

  


“So, preference?” says Kent.

“I like Samwell,” says Jack self-consciously.

“Samwell gave me the better aid package, so I’m down,” says Kenny, and they send in their acceptance that night.

  


“I had to give them my legal name for records, but they’re putting me in the system as Kent! My username and my email and whatever will be kparson instead of mparson.”

“That’s amazing,” says Jack warmly. “And they’re putting you with a male roommate?”

“Yep. And they won’t tell him I’m trans, they’re going to let me decide if I want to do that? But they’ll put me with someone who checked the ‘doesn’t mind a trans roommate’ box on the roommate questionnaire.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Oh, shut up.”

  


“I got put in Pembroke West.”

“I got put in Brecon.”

A pause as they stare at the campus map on their respective computers.

“Those aren’t really close.”

“That’s okay, I guess.”

And Brecon is really close to the rink, so. There’s that.

  


“My roommate’s name is Aaron, and he likes Against Me! and theatre. I think we’ll get along.”

“Cool. Mine hasn’t emailed me back yet.”

  


Jack moves into the dorms a week before everybody else because of hockey. He brings in his boxes, unpacks his skates, and heads out to Faber. He couldn’t have explained why he needed to do it, before he even meets up with the team, but he sweet-talks the equipment manager (once he finds him—he does end up having to turn back and try again later) into unlocking the door, laces up his skates, and steps out onto the ice.

 _Hello,_ the ice seems to sing. _We’ve been waiting for you._

Jack takes wide, slow laps and breathes in the cold air.

  


He meets the guy from the tour again, who has apparently decided to lean into his new nickname, and his other teammates seem nice enough. There’s a little staring and whispering, but he’d expected that, and mostly they treat him like any other guy. The hockey house is a run-down dump, but Jack wasn’t really expecting anything else, going by every locker room he’s ever been in for his whole life. What kind of house did he _expect_ hockey players to keep?

He’d hoped to see Kenny earlier, but non-athletes can’t move in for another week and the distance is too great for Kenny to just pop in. And there’s no classes yet of course, so Jack is basically unpacked and chomping at the bit by the time he gets the text, sitting on a nasty green couch in the Haus.

_I’m here_

His chest seizes with joy and he smiles uncontrollably down at his phone.

“Oh, look at that smile!” chirps L-man, one of his new teammates and a junior. “Someone got Zimmerboy’s number!”

“Huh?” says Jack, momentarily distracted. “Don’t you give your phone number to anyone?”

“It’s an expression, dude,” sighs L-man. “Like, your girlfriend got your number? Knows how you tick? Capable of pulling a smile out of serious-as-shit Jack Zimmermann? Does nobody know this?”

“Bro, that’s not a thing,” someone says. “And even if it was, it doesn’t make sense talking to somebody who’s literally on their phone.”

The group devolves into linguistics discussion and chirping, and Jack goes back to his phone, unnoticed.

_Where?_

_Pulled up in front of Pembroke_

Jack sticks his phone in his pocket and heads out the door.

He gets to Pembroke maybe ten minutes later. Campus is crawling with arriving students, and he scans the street, searching for a familiar thatch of blonde hair.

A door shuts, and there he is, walking out of the building. Jack turns toward the noise, and he’s moving, calling, “Kenny!” as he goes, and Kent turns at the sound of his name. He lights up like the sunrise when he spots Jack, and later Jack will think _that was a damn meadow run_ but all he’s thinking in the moment is _I need to hold him_ and _oh good, he’s running too, I’ll get to hold him faster,_ and then Kenny’s in his arms and Jack is squeezing him tightly.

  


Jack helps Kent and Gina unpack the car. Kent’s roommate has left a note on one of the beds asking politely to have that one if Kent doesn’t mind too much, so they pile the boxes around the other bed. Gina leaves, and suddenly Jack’s palms start sweating. His heart pounds. So when Kent opens up a box and pulls out sheets, Jack takes another and starts unpacking clothes into the captain’s bed. Kent gives him a weird look, and Jack knows he probably wasn’t planning on unpacking everything right this second, but he needs a task, needs something to do with his hands, something between him and Kent right now.

“Hey,” says a tall, blond, lanky kid with glasses, standing in the doorway. “Are you Kent?”

“That’s me,” says Kent, standing from where he’s stuffing socks into a drawer.

“Cool,” says Aaron, and offers Kent a fistbump.

“This is Jack,” says Kent, and meets Jack’s eyes, face unsure.

Jack wants to say “his boyfriend,” but his throat is full and he doesn’t. Aaron nods. “Nice to meet you,” he says, and starts making his own bed. Jack calms down a little. They have a buffer now.

“I’m going to head out,” Jack says eventually.

“You want company?” says Kent, voice careful.

“Not right now,” says Jack. “Catch you tomorrow?”

Kent nods, looking unsure.

  


Jack paces his room, trying to think. He wants this. It was his idea. So why is he freaking out about being here all of a sudden? About Kent being in his life long-term again? It feels different from the tours, when they were only together for a day or two. This is something permanent.

They’d hurt each other so badly. They were so underneath each other’s skin that it was only too easy to do. And Jack doesn’t want to do that anymore.

He texts Kent the next day.

_come over_

Kent turns up a quarter of an hour later, complaining about the hill and the stairs, and Jack’s worry takes a backseat. He wraps his arms around Kent and pulls him in, cradling him against his chest. Kent stretches up and kisses him. Jack kisses back.

“Hey,” he says, grinning uncontrollably.

“Hey,” says Kent back, and he’s so gorgeous, eyes crinkled at the corners—they’re pale green today—and that one-sided smile. Jack knows he’s on testosterone now, and he imagines he can see some difference. It hasn’t been very long, though, he’s probably imagining it. Or maybe just being on the hormones makes Kenny more _himself_ somehow.

They kiss lazily for a few minutes, Jack alternating between ‘I have to kiss him’ and ‘I can’t kiss him because I’m smiling too hard.’

Finally, Kent snuggles into Jack’s chest, burying his head under Jack’s chin. Jack squeezes him.

“We need some boundaries,” says Kent.

Jack hums in agreement. “We need to not try to hurt each other.”

“Right,” says Kent. “I talked to my therapist about it. He said something that I think might help.”

“Yeah?”

“D’you think we could, when we’re mad and we think we might say something like that, we could just walk away? And agree not to follow each other?”

“We can try,” says Jack. “And then reconnect after we calm down?”

“Yeah.”

“I also think we need a certain amount of time not together, at least at first. Like, what if we said not to spend more than half our awake time together?”

Kent wrinkles his nose. “Even on weekends?”

“I’ll have games,” Jack points out. “I don’t think it’ll be that difficult. And we can always agree to relax it. Just…” He fiddles with Kent’s sleeve, trying to put it into words. “I feel like, at the end there, we’d kind of forgotten how to be separate people.”

Kent nods into his chest.

“Okay. Sounds good.”

  


They fuck it up, of course. But they’re better. Jack drops by Kent’s room between classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he doesn’t feel like going back to his dorm and he knows Kent’s free. Kent comes and lounges on Jack’s bed to do homework in the evenings.

“How can you possibly work like that?” Jack asks him once from his place at the desk.

“Never learned how to do work at a desk,” says Kent absentmindedly, twirling his pencil. “Homeschooled, remember? Did it in the car, on the sofa, sprawled out on my stomach in the exercise room. Never had a desk.”

“Did you like it?” asks Jack’s roommate, Toby, from his own desk.

Kent shrugs. “Yeah? What’s so great about school? Never really thought about it, ‘s not like I could go to class with my schedule.”

“Why not?”

Kent looks up, seeming to register who he’s talking to. “I was a competitive figure skater, dude.” His lips press together, daring Toby to comment.

“Neat,” says Toby, and goes back to his reading.

  


“Aaron asked me if we’re together,” says Kent one day as they’re walking through the quad. Jack stiffens and makes himself relax. Kent lives as a boy here, and accordingly, it makes Jack’s heart pound just to take his hand in public. Not that he looks much different than he did in Montréal and Syracuse, but then, Jack knows that people usually assumed Kent was a girl with short hair when they saw them together, and fucked as it is, that meant Jack was safe. Here, they run into people who know Kent, and know he’s a guy, and if Jack gets caught with him he gets outed.

But…it’s Samwell. One in four. The only thing he has to be afraid of here is it becoming public record, reaching the NHL, and then only if he does well and has a chance at signing after graduation. And Jack’s a big guy. He has a lot less to fear than some other guys.

Jack still has to see a psychiatrist occasionally to get his anxiety meds, and she talks sometimes about acceptable risks.

“It’s okay if you told him. Or if you didn’t, and you want to.”

Kent relaxes.

  


“Come skate with me,” Jack says. Kent grins up at him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

  


They take the ice, just the two of them, early enough before practice that none of Jack’s teammates are there yet, and just skate, racing, skating circles around each other, and laughing.

“Hey, Jack!” It’s Shitty. “Who’s your friend?”

Jack checks his watch. They still have thirty minutes until afternoon practice. Shitty’s just. Extremely early.

“I’m Kent,” says Kent, skating over to shake hands. His voice is pitched low, and Jack wonders why it’s important to him that Shitty read him as male. Extra dysphoria today? Or is it just that he’s figure skating?

“Cool. I’m Shitty.”

“You’re Shitty? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Can’t say the same, brah,” says Shitty, frowning.

Kent shrugs, but Jack imagines that he can feel hurt welling up in him.

“You’re mad fast,” continues Shitty.

Kent grins, sudden and blinding even at an angle.

“Yep. Wanna race?”

_”Ch’yeah.”_

Kent skates back to Jack while Shitty laces his skates up.

“We don’t have to tell him,” he says quietly. “I know he’s your teammate.”

Jack grabs his hand and pulls Kent into a twirl. Kent laughs, clear and joyful and easy, and takes Jack’s other hand. And then he’s off, leading Jack through something that looks like swing dancing on ice. All Jack has to do is stay on his feet. “Put your hands on my waist,” Kenny says at one point. Jack does, and Kent leaps lightly into the air, making it look like Jack lifted him.

Shitty claps. Kent lets go of one of Jack’s hands and bows elaborately.

“I didn’t know you did figure skating, Jacky Z,” says Shitty.

“I don’t,” says Jack, grinning. “Kent just makes me look good.”

“C’mon,” says Kent. “Race. I’ll even let you have the inside loop.”

They do three laps of the rink. Kent kicks Shitty’s _ass._

“You win, brah,” says Shitty, panting. “Well, that’s me warmed up. Do you skate competitively?”

“Used to,” says Kent. “Wanna see a jump?”

“Uh, _yeah,_ ” says Shitty.

Kent’s warm this time, unlike the jump he did for the rink in Montréal, and Jack’s learning to tell the difference between them. This time, when he flings himself into the air, he’s going faster, and higher, and Jack’s pretty sure he does more turns. Shitty applauds again.

“What’s that one called?” he asks excitedly.

“Triple toe,” says Kent, doing a sit spin, apparently just for the hell of it. “So whatcha doing here, Shitty?”

“Got here early for practice,” says Shitty. “Doors are usually open by now.”

“So the rest of the team will be here soon?” asks Kent.

“Soon enough.”

“Cool, cool. I should head out,” says Kent, already moving toward the door. Jack’s heart aches, but he makes no move to stop him.

“Cool dude,” says Shitty. “Where’d you meet him?”

“Uh, at the Olympics,” says Jack.

“Oh yeah? Neat,” says Shitty. “Wait, you weren’t playing, right?”

“Just watching,” says Jack. He wants to say _Kent was, though,_ but he knows that will only lead to more questions and probably end up outing Kent. “C’mon, let’s practice slapshots.”

“Jackie boy, you’re going to be captain of this team before you leave,” says Shitty solemnly, “cause literally no one else gives quite as many fucks about how good we are as you.”

Jack isn’t sure if that’s a compliment.

  


October begins, and Jack is very aware that it’s hockey season. It’s harder to ignore than it was last year, because he’s in the constant company of an entire hockey team who are invested in the games.

“Jager is a _Flyers_ fan,” he tells Kent. “I can’t decide if that’s a terrible thing for the obvious reason, or a good thing because he absolutely does not idolize my dad, and therefore, me.”

“You realize I have absolutely no idea what the obvious reason is or what the Flyers have to do with idolizing you,” says Kent, not looking up from his book.

Jack laughs, suddenly so grateful that Kent isn’t a hockey fan. “I love you,” he says, and leans over to kiss him. Kent kisses back.

“You should watch games sometimes,” he tells Jack when they break apart.

Jack tries and fails to figure out why Kent would think that. It’s always good to watch the games, of course, it’s good for them a little like watching tape is, except they’re not studying how to beat a given team in particular.

“Why?” he asks eventually.

Kent smiles crookedly. “You love hockey,” he says simply.

Jack kisses him again, smoothing one hand over Kent’s cheek and cupping his face tenderly.

“Watch with me?”

Kent raises an eyebrow. “You better make it worth my time.”

  


Kent turns out to enjoy watching the games, though, and Jack can almost forget about how it’s been over a year since he last watched an NHL game. Kent remembers enough from hockey camp that he follows the game without much trouble, only needing Jack to explain things like the difference between a major and minor penalty.

“Aaron’s wearing nail polish,” he says apropos of absolutely nothing at the second intermission.

“…Okay?” says Jack.

“I used to love wearing nail polish when I was a kid,” says Kent, staring at the Liberty commercial. “But boys don’t like wearing nail polish.”

Jack understands now, or thinks he does. “But Aaron does.”

“And it’s okay for him, because he’s a _real boy,_ ” says Kent, bitterness dripping from the words. He’s peeling one of his thumbnails off, and Jack grabs his hand and squeezes it.

“You’re a real boy,” he says quietly. “If you wanna wear nail polish, you should do it.”

Kent holds his hand tightly and doesn’t let go until the third period starts. Jack’s fingers tingle when he lets go, but it’s okay.

  


The next game they watch together, Kent brings a bottle of red nail polish and doesn’t do anything with it for fifteen minutes, which is how long it takes Jack to figure out what he wants to say.

“Hey.” He nudges Kent, who glances at him. “You’re helping me take NHL hockey back. Let me help you take this back.”

Kent screws up his face like he’s going to cry. Then, with a sudden movement, he lunges for the bottle and shoves it into Jack’s hands.

Jack has -2 ideas about how to paint nails, but he’s going to try.

By the time he’s done, there’s polish on Kent’s fingers, Jack’s fingers, and also Jack’s jeans, but Kent is giggling uncontrollably, so Jack is proud of himself anyway.

  


“I love this song,” Kent says suddenly one day while they’re eating lunch. Jack listens for a few seconds. It’s some female pop artist.

“Yeah?” he says.

“I convinced myself I don’t like pop music,” says Kenny, leaning into his shoulder. “But I don’t want to do that anymore.”

October turns into November. Kent comes to all the home games that he can. Jack tells Toby that Kent’s his boyfriend, and Toby says, “I figured,” and nothing changes.

  


Practice schedule changes, and Jack and Kent have to stop turning up for practice forty to sixty minutes early and having Kent duck out before the whole team gets there. (Or. They could still do it for morning practice, but Kent flatly refuses to get up to skate at four AM. Jack pouts, but gives in.)

“Come after practice,” Jack suggests instead.

“Okay…” says Kent. “How long does it take for the rest of your teammates to clear out?”

Jack sighs. He’s tired of living like this. “Come when it’s over. Meet the team.”

Kent whips around to stare at him.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

So Kent turns up as practice is ending the next day, and ties on his skates as the rest of the team are clearing out. Jack bribed the equipment manager to drive the Zamboni through an hour later. When Kent stands up, Jack skates over to the door to gesture him in.

“Hey guys,” he says to the remaining teammates. “This is Kent.”

“Yo,” says Kent. “Christ, you hockey players do ruin the ice, don’t you?”

Lasky, one of the boys, mutters something in Spanish, and Kent laughs, clear as a bell, and says, “Claro, pero puedes hacer esto?”, loops the ice twice, and launches straight into part of one of his routines. Jack recognizes it by now, sees how Kent is using fancy-looking footwork to warm up and prepare to launch into a jump—a double, because he’s still not that warm.

“Fuuuuck,” Lasky says when he lands the jump. “Está chiste, dude, todo respeto.”

Kent grins like he won the lottery.

  


It’s not perfect. Already hyped up on finals stress, they fight about where they’re spending winter break—Jack doesn’t want to spend it with Kent’s mom, and he thinks Kent shouldn’t want to spend it with Kent’s mom either, but Kent hadn’t been expecting anything other than ‘we go back to our own houses.’ Jack finds himself wanting to say something ugly, and he says, “I have to go,” and walks out before he can. When he’s calmer, he texts Kent back, just a simple _hey._

Kent texts back _I’m not ready to talk to you yet,_ and, almost before Jack finishes forming the worry, _we’re good_ followed by _or we’re gonna be good anyway just give me a little more time._

When Kent’s ready, they talk it out, and they are good.

  


They come back from winter break. Or, Kent does, and Jack’s plane gets delayed due to weather and it takes him so long to get back to Samwell that he has to go straight to bed and get up five hours later for practice. (Because of course there’s practice. Even if it is snowing. It never would have occurred to Jack that it might be cancelled.)

But after practice, there he is, same as always, waving at Jack through the glass with that cocky grin. Jack skates to the door and tugs him onto the ice.

“Hold _on,_ Christ, let me take my skate guards off,” says Kent, and then they’re gliding gently backwards, Kent’s hands in Jack’s. Jack has missed him, in a way that hasn’t really hit until now.

It has always been Jack’s anxiety in the way of them being out. Kent lives out at Samwell, has made clear when the subject came up that he’s happy to go at Jack’s speed, but that he’s ready to be out as a couple when Jack is.

So there’s no reason, not when Jack wants it so badly, not to tug Kent to his chest and kiss him.

He does.

Kent smiles into the kiss, and so does Jack, and then they can’t kiss anymore, can only stand there with their foreheads pressed together while Jack’s teammates hoot and holler and make noises about fines.

“Hi,” says Jack under the noise.

“Hi,” replies Kent.

They break apart eventually, and Jack looks around at his teammates’ faces with some trepidation, but they’re all smiling, still chirping.

  


Kent catches Lasky before he leaves and says, “Perdoneme que no te decía antes.”

“Tío,” says Lasky, clapping him on the shoulder, “no pasa nada, we're good, bro, vale?”

“Vale,” says Kent, smiling with relief.

“You have to do that shit on your own time.” Lasky gives the shoulder a squeeze and skates off.

  


“I didn’t realize you and Lasky were friends,” says Jack later, as they walk back to main campus through the snow. Kent shrugs.

“I guess, yeah. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to in my language, you know?”

Jack does know, he thinks. It must be similar to the relief of being able to speak French at home.

He reaches out and takes Kent’s hand as they walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two years later: Bitty turns up and he and Kent have So. Much. Fun. doing jumps together and of course Bitty knows who McKenzie Parson is and they become close friends.
> 
> As always, Samwell is my alma mater, Bryn Mawr, except with AMAB people.
> 
> I gave Kent all my frustrations with Spanish because I could. Carlos Velasco Ruiz is a Galician native who grew up in Andalucía and is now in the states to play hockey, and bringing with him Andaluz Spanish to creep into Kent’s vocabulary because my Spanish is Andaluz and I love it. His conversations with Kent are translated below:  
> 
>
>> Lasky, one of the boys, mutters something in Spanish, and Kent laughs, clear as a bell, and says, “Sure, but can you do this?” and launches straight into part of one of his routines. Jack recognizes it by now, sees how Kent is using fancy-looking footwork to warm up and prepare to launch into a jump—a double, because he’s still not that warm.  
> “Fuuuuck,” Lasky says when he lands the jump. “It’s a joke, dude, all the respect.”  
> 
>
>> Kent catches Lasky before he leaves and says, “Sorry I didn’t tell you before.”  
> “Dude,” says Lasky, clapping him on the shoulder, “no problem, we're good, bro, ‘kay?”  
> “’Kay,” says Kent, smiling with relief.


End file.
